Renaissance Pleasure Faire, c. 1975

Welcome to my past.

I was born the year before WWII ended, and have since led what many people seem to consider a varied and colorful life.

I can’t remember when friends first started telling me that I should write my memoirs, but in 2015, I began posting brief chapters of reminiscence each week as “Throwback Thursday” essays on Facebook.

Before long, readers started telling me that I should compile these essays into a book. While a nice idea, this was impractical because of the sheer number of photos, many in color, involved in over 200 (and counting) essays.

I next considered a website, but upon inquiry, discovered that setting one up would be a very expensive proposition, and I’d still have to do most of the work anyway.

Since I’ve long been familiar with the elements of the free online tool Blogger™, I decided to turn the memoir essays into linked sections, each containing about 20-30 stories. (Apologies for any disparity in type size as a result of importing material from other sources)

These tales are not in any kind of autobiographical order. Many of them are about fascinating people I’ve known, including members of my family. Some are based on my own artwork. They're all just the tiniest bit outrageous.

Welcome to my past.

(Photo by Laura Goldman)
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Table of Contents Color KEY:

Red = Tales of the 1960s and 1970s/San Francisco Stories

Pink = Encounters with Remarkable people

Green = Family and Personal Stories

Blue = Sonoma County Stories/Pennsylvania Stories

Black = Renaissance and Dickens Fair(e)s and Other Theater

Purple = Interlocken Center fro Experiential Education Stories

Orange = Artwork and Art-Related stories

 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, OR,
SACK IT TO THEM

2. HANGIN' WITH STRAIGHT ARROW; DAD'S BROMANCE

3. THE HEARTBREAK OF UPSCALE RETAIL

4. A NIGHT WITH ST. LUCY

5. ADVENTURES IN THE KEY OF D; THE MARVELOUS MR. MCKECHNIE

6. NOT YOUR NORMAN ROCKWELL MOMENT

7. GREEN BAY INTERLUDE; HILLS OF THIS STAMP

8. TOO HOT FOR TENNESSEE, OR,
NO PIE FOR MR WILSON

9. GRAMMY'S RIDE

10. DOUBLE-DIP OF MEMORY

11. A CLASSIC(AL) FOLKTALE

12. OH SAY, CAN YOU...

13. A WIZARD CALLS; TERENCE MCKENNA AND THE ELFCLOWNS OF HYPERSPACE

14. HURRICANE ARCHAEOLOGY, OR
HAZEL WAS A BITCH

15. IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME, OR,
NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST; LIFE WITH A LABYRINTH

16. NOT A BIG SARDINE; NAMING THE BOYS

17. DEMON IN DISGUISE: THE REMARKABLE LIFE AND TIMES OF DAVID BROMBERG

18. THE SUBJECT WAS DEATH (A HOWARD TALE)

19. INTERLOCKEN SUGAR BLUES/CANDY WARS

20. ROOSTING ON THE RIDGE

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1. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, August, 1945; Wilson Borough Area Joint Junior-Senior High School, 1956-1961

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
Or,
SACK IT TO 'EM

When I turned 13, I was given a clothes allowance of $30 per month and basically put in charge of my own wardrobe. This was presumably to teach me fiscal responsibility, but (to my parents’ quiet dismay) I soon began to exhibit a subtle but distinct eccentricity of dress, including, but not limited to, unusual choices of color, fabric or design.

Sister Sue gets crowned (on a blind date) wearing a dress of her own creation. Being remarkably sweet and lovely, she was always being crowned queen of something-or-other.

Although I initially sucked at "Home Economics" sewing classes, I was inspired by my sister Sue, a whiz on the Singer and always beautifully dressed, to begin making my own clothes, occasionally out of old pieces of fabric stored thriftily in our basement. This not only saved money, but gave me a chance to explore my budding sartorial creativity.

 

Old curtains and drapes were an excellent source of fabric. For instance, in the  photo below, there I am in 1945, adorably playing peekaboo with the kitchen curtains.

 

In the second photo, the identical red-and-white curtain fabric appears on a trim pullover vest in a 1961 yearbook photo of a singing group called the Wilsonaires.

 

My finest fabric-recycling moment, however, came earlier on, inspired by a fashion innovation called the “Sack Dress.” This garment created a brief but intense media furor when introduced in the 1950s by Chanel and Balenciaga as an alternative to form-fitting sheath dresses or voluminous skirts afloat on layers of petticoats beneath cinched-in waists.

The sack dress inspired countless jokes, lampoons, cartoons, editorials and commentaries. Men mostly hated it. The daring women who wore it enjoyed the freedom from tight girdles and constricted waistbands.

 

By the late 1950s the sack was yesterday’s news in high-fashion circles, which meant that it was only beginning to find its way into hometown department stores in Easton, PA. I bought two, and loved their freedom and simplicity. When I wore one to school, however, I caught flak for it, even from some teachers, in the generally conservative milieu that was Wilson High.

Well.

I went home, raided the basement for some nice clean cotton flour sacks I’d seen there (printed with manufacturer’s logo, weight, and other specifics), and sewed them together, following a very fashionable sack-dress  "misses" pattern from McCalls.

When I wore the resulting creation to school, the reaction was gratifying. The other kids loved it, but I could almost hear the more conservative teachers thinking: “OK, it’s clean, ironed, well-made; it’s not too short or too tight or too revealing, b-but IT’S MADE OUT OF FLOUR SACKS!!!” 

In later years, I realized that it was, quite simply, a finely nuanced “Up yours.”  (I got away with occasional quirks like this because most of the time I masqueraded as a goody-goody honor student.)

Having made my point, I never wore the dress again, and had pretty much forgotten the whole episode until 2018, during a visit from my cousins Tim and Terry (we were meeting for the first time as adults),when I discovered it had become enshrined in family legend.

“Tell me,” asked Tim, with a touch of awe, “Did you really wear a burlap bag to school?”

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Historical note: In the 1930s, with times tight in the throes of the Great Depression, flour merchants realized that women were re-purposing flour sacks to make clothes for their children and for themselves. Consequently, the entrepreneurs began selling flour in brightly colored and patterned sacks.

 For more on this phenomenon: https://www.littlethings.com/flour-sack-dresses

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2. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill and Wilson Borough, Pennsylvania; Circle M Ranch, Blairstown, New Jersey, mid-1950s

HANGIN’ WITH STRAIGHT ARROW; DAD’S BROMANCE

In the middle of the 1950s, my father, most uncharacteristically, became involved in what would now be called a "bromance" with a new fellow employee at the Dixie Cup division of the American Can Company.

He came home one day full of enthusiasm about this new guy, Fred Meagher (an Irish name, pronounced “Marr”). Fred, it seemed, was an artist, an illustrator, an inventor, a noted horseman, and was listed in Who's Who as an “Indian Authority.” My dad was totally intrigued.

 

As a new horse-owner at age 11, I was briefly impressed by the “horseman” part, but it wasn’t until several days later, when Dad presented me with one of Fred’s books, that I literally got the picture.

The little volume was one of a series called (in the sensitivity-challenged 1950s) Straight Arrow's Injun-uity. Looking it over, I realized that Dad’s Fred Meagher and the guy who produced the marvelously meticulous drawings on the cards (Collect Them All!) that separated the biscuit layers in our boxes of Nabisco Shredded Wheat were one and the same.

Beautifully illustrated "Injun-uity" cards

 

For younger readers: Straight Arrow was the Indian hero of a Nabisco-sponsored radio serial in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Forget Tonto: this guy was a legendary Comanche warrior with a secret cave hideout, a paleface sidekick (Packy McCloud), a magnificent palomino stallion named Fury, a badass dog, a spunky lady friend (Mesquite Molly), and even a secret identity, as mild-mannered rancher Steve Adams.

Straight Arrow and doggie kick bad-guy butt.

 

(The backstory: a Comanche orphan was adopted and raised as a son by wealthy ranchers; he adopted his Straight Arrow identity to fulfill an ancient prophecy of a warrior who would right wrongs and fight for justice. If he had a superpower, it was his ability to pass equally well in both worlds.)

One of Fred's spunky ladies.

 

 In 1950, when it was decided by Magazine Enterprises that Straight Arrow should make the leap from airwaves to comic-book pages, Fred Meagher was a natural choice for the job. 

Born in 1912, he had become a commercial artist and professional muralist by his teen years, and was hired at age 22 by the Philadelphia Inquirer (and later the New York Sun) as a political cartoonist. (He switched to comics after receiving a warning from the Mob that his cartoons were a little too good).

He did time in the 1930s with the Disney Studios as an animator and story-synchronizer for the earliest adventures of Mickey, Donald, and the gang, not to mention classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Fred Meagher as a young guy working for Disney.

 

During WWII, although he joined the 104^th US Cavalry regiment, he spent most of his military time producing aviation and training manuals, as well as action comics about daring pilots with names like “Tailspin Tommy,” and “Wings Winfair.”

He also began indulging a passion for Western lore, with “Texas Rangers,” “Tom Mix,” “Broncho [sic] Bill,” “Buffalo Bill,” and “Vesta West and Her Horse, Traveler,” taking side excursions into “Flash Gordon,” and work on the creation of Smokey the Bear.

Then, in 1950, came “Straight Arrow," and the “Injun-uity” cards and books, which he drew, along with “Buffalo Bill,” until deciding to re-join the world of corporate art and advertising.

When my dad first introduced me to Fred in 1955, even after all the buildup, the man did not disappoint. Stocky, broad, ruddy and rough-hewn, he had a big warm, authoritative voice and more than a touch of the showman. (He was actually once cast as Buffalo Bill in a TV serial that never made it to the screen.)

Like my dad, he was endlessly curious and interested in almost everything, good at creating and contriving and constructing; this was probably why they got along so well.

We began to receive invitations to hang out at the Meaghers’ “Circle M Ranch,” a sizeable spread in the hills north of Blairstown, New Jersey. Fred was married to a beautiful part-Indian woman named Ruthanne, with two small boys and a stepdaughter, Rebecca.

Fortunately, Rebecca and I were the same age, two horse-crazy little tomboys, and we delighted in ditching the grown-ups, climbing onto a couple of the ranch’s big spirited geldings, and taking off to explore its many trails, woods, creeks and meadows, inventing adventures as we went.

That summer we all went to horse shows, where Fred often served as judge or announcer, and to horse auctions. Before long, he’d convinced us that we needed another mount for trail rides, and engineered Dad’s purchase of a registered palomino mare named Fancy Prance (long on looks; short on smarts). Along the way Fred also shared all kinds of riding and horse-management tips, interspersed with fantastic stories straight out of the comic-book realm.

Dad with Tomahawk and Fancy Prance.

 

This continued through that summer and early fall, but with the advent of winter and cessation of outdoor activities, the dynamic began to change.

It was a long icy drive between our place and the Circle M; Fred got involved with the Blairstown theater company, and my dad in planning a riding club for horse-owners in our neighborhood; Rebecca and I now seldom saw each other and (pre-Internet) got pulled back into our own lives.

Our dads’ bromance modulated itself into a warm, mostly workplace-based friendship, which tailed off in the 1960s when the Meaghers relocated to Nevada.

The term “straight arrow,” meaning an honest and morally upright person, entered the lexicon of Americanisms in the 1960s. Our “Injun-uity” book, and several hand-drawn and –inked panels of “Buffalo Bill” (now collectors’ items) eventually got thrown or given away.

Fred Meagher passed away in 1979 (my dad, who was about the same age, would outlive him by over 30 years).

I would probably think of Fred only occasionally these days, but I’m reminded anew of his imagination and artistic skill every time I drive past a certain kind of gas station and see one of his most iconic and enduring creations—that graceful flying red horse launching itself against the sky.

 

Happy trails, Fred.

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3. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Westport, Connecticut; Summer, 1967

THE HEARTBREAK OF UPSCALE RETAIL

Photo by Christopher Kirkland. I don't remember what it was for—probably local advertising. This was a lighting-test shot.

So here I am in a Vidal Sassoon-style haircut and Rudi Gernreich knits, in one of a series of photo-shoot lighting tests for The Gallery Shop in Westport, Connecticut.
I was working at that tony little boutique while spending a summer with my parents before heading to grad school in California. When I took the job, little did I know I was in for a cross-cultural experience 

Since I’d grown up in Pennsylvania Dutch farming country and attended an it-takes-all-kinds university without joining a sorority, this was my first wide exposure to old-monied New England Yankee aristocracy and new-monied Manhattan-based-commuter wealth. (Westport is famously known as a “bedroom community” for New York City.)

The Gallery Shop sold women’s fashions by trendy designers like Gernreich and Pucci and Mary Quant, as well as more sedate brands for the not-so-trendoid set. I soon learned to utilize words such as “stunning,” “chic,” “signature look,” and “ensemble” with a straight face, and to appear polite instead of annoyed or obsequious when treated like a servant (a not infrequent occurrence). 

Some of our customers were perfectly charming—aristocratic matrons with expensive facelifts and lovely manners; sweet preppy girls with names like Bitsy and Muffy; silver-haired doyennes with remarkable posture and impeccable taste; guest stars from the Westport Playhouse, friendly to potential ticket buyers; and a few young internationally known models who usually arrived barefoot and wearing tatty cutoffs.

 
Westport's main shopping district; the Gallery Shop is long gone.

Others were downright sad—the anxious trophy wives who would buy five bathing suits (or blouses, or pairs of shorts), and then come back the next day and buy five more because their husbands hadn’t liked any of them; the perfectly coiffed women who would try on clothes very slowly all afternoon, apparently just for the company; the stage mother who often had her sulky but pretty little boy in tow, his hair unnaturally bleached in hopes of landing his latest movie role, and could talk about nothing else.

And then there were the horrors, like the entitled teens who left all rejected garments crumpled and trampled on the dressing-room floor and tried to shoplift everything in sight. I remember remonstrating with one of them, who screeched indignantly “Do you KNOW who my father is?” (I was so tempted to reply: “No I don’t, do you?”) One of them was actually allowed to shoplift; her father would pay for anything that went missing after she had been in.

The worst were the battle-axes whose hobby seemed to be finding vulnerable salespersons and attempting to reduce them to tears; from them I learned the subtle art of standing up to bullies while neither cringing nor offending.

All in all, it was as if I had spent the summer in a different civilization.

In August, I gladly turned over the job to the owner’s niece, and shortly thereafter found myself living (pretty much by accident) in the middle of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in the waning days of the fabled Summer of Love.

It’s a wonder I didn’t get the bends.

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4. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC), Occidental, California; December, Mid-1990s

A NIGHT WITH ST. LUCY

Dougo en travesti

 

These startling images first appeared years ago, when a rather primitive photocopier encountered a handful of photos taken in the communal kitchen of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (kitchen seen around :50 in the  somewhat breathtaking short video below).

https://oaec.org/about-us/visual-tour/ (1:20)

 

 

The occasion was one of the yearly “St. Lucy’s” parties held to celebrate the birthday of Head Gardener "Dougo" Gosling, a living treasure who has stewarded the sumptuous gardens on this property for nearly four decades of communal endeavor. 

Dougo with his two sisters

...and with friend Ina

 

His tenure goes back to the early 1980s, when the 80-acre spread was still known as the Farallones Institute Rural Center, a community “dedicated to promoting ecologically integrated living design.” (I lived there in 1979-1980, but that’s another TBT).

Dougo, being Norwegian-American, loved the fact that his birthday coincided with the feast day of St. Lucy, traditionally celebrated in Norway and Sweden with sweets and lights. All party invitees were requested to dress as their image of St. Lucy, usually represented in Scandinavia as a young girl in a long white gown, wearing a crown of evergreens topped with burning candles, and often carrying a trayful of treats.

As one can see here, by the time this particular party rolled around, the St. Lucy interpretation had grown to include very straight men in very naughty lingerie. In spite of which, the St. Lucy’s party was essentially family-compatible, full of friendship and feasting and music and dancing far into the night, a gently tinseled masquerade with a bracing whisper of Saturnalia.

 

The event took place for a number of years, becoming more elaborate and cumbersome to put together, until it finally crumbled under the weight of its own creativity. 

 

Dougo is still Head Gardener, and still a bringer of goodies to the world, but the St. Lucy’s parties are gone, preserved only in warm memories and the occasional odd photographic trick of the light.

I was there.

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5. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco Bay Area, 1975-Present

ADVENTURES IN THE KEY OF D; THE MARVELOUS MR. McKECHNIE 

Doug McKechnie (R) with Ray Jason in the 1970s

 

OK, here’s a story: one day in 1975, not long after legendary street juggler Ray Jason had introduced me to his handsome friend Doug McKechnie, I received an excited phone call from the latter, saying: “You’ve got to get over here and hear what we recorded last night!” 

This was in the days before digital or the Internet, and cassette tapes, newly introduced, were not known for their fidelity. So I trotted over to Doug’s, where he cued up an eight-track reel-to-reel tape, and challenged me, with a twinkle in his eye, to guess what instrument was being played here.

Atop the Golden Gate Bridge in 2015, with fellow bridge-player Paul diBenedictus.

 

I listened, and heard a vast resonance like an angelic chorus of Martian dinosaurs. It was eerie, primitive, and quite wonderful. “Doug,” I said, “I have no idea what that instrument is, but it’s astounding. And it must be absolutely HUGE.”

“You might say that,” replied Doug, “It’s the Golden Gate Bridge.”

 

http://youtu.be/xolVnj0DDaQ (Trailer for A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE)

I should explain that Doug has been obsessed with synthesizers and acoustical possibilities from the word Moog, (and manages to be a brilliant keyboard artist with only 9+ 2/3 fingers). He and a select band of fellow enthusiasts had actually crept out onto the iconic bridge at night, wired it for sound, and played it with mallets, ending up in the hands of the highway patrol (as you’ll see in the trailer), but, after some fast talking, emerging with tapes intact. (Recently they did it again —legally—for a 50th-anniversary edition.)

 1970s Moogmeister

 

This was my introduction to the dizzying collection of interests and talents that is Doug McKechnie. The man is a true polymath, acquiring life skills and experiences like other people accumulate pocket change. His ongoing/evolving job description is a blur of hyphens: singer-instrumentalist-composer-impresario-actor-producer-director-publicist-writer-editor-monologist-PR guy-videographer-photographer—the list goes on and on.

It takes five Facebook sites to cover his current activities, which include “The Common Public Good,” a forum for discussion regarding the creation of laws governing the same, and the San Francisco Synthesizer Ensemble, which he created in 1985. It also includes “Craig and McGregor & Friends,” with whom he now regularly performs original and jazz standards of the 20th century.

His musical talents expanded into composition early on; in 1977, he scored the Oscar- nominated short-subject documentary Spaceborne, and in 1987 joined fellow bridge-prankster John Lewis to create the soundtrack of Women For America, For the World, that year’s Oscar winner in the same category.

 

In life, as in music, he’s got the art of improvisation down pat; here’s another story:

Twinkling the ivories

 

Not long after I met Doug, the editor of California Living (for which magazine I’d recently written stories on the Dickens Fair and San Francisco street entertainers), asked if I knew anyone who could read palms; he wanted to add an interesting touch to his upcoming holiday party.

I mentioned this to Doug, who said: “Oh, I can do that.” 

O-kay. I dressed him in a green velveteen jacket, and we showed up at the party. Doug was led off to an unoccupied room where he could do his stuff. I watched as one or two people went in to sit down with him, and emerged with their faces somehow—aglow. 

The seductive songster

Soon a wave of conversation about this guy rippled through the party, and a line formed at the door of the room. Learning Doug was a friend of mine, several guests (mostly women) approached me to find out more about him. I enjoyed implying a mysterious past; I may have mentioned Scottish witches. 

After we left, with effusive praise and thanks ringing in our ears, I asked him: “So do you really know how to read palms? 

He just twinkled at me.

Doug gives great twinkle, which is practically the job description for one of his favorite seasonal gigs As fall approaches, he begins growing out his silvery-white jazzcat beard into a full Santa fluff. 

 

Post-Thanksgiving, he dons luxurious red-velvet-and-fur togs and emerges in true Saint-Nick splendor at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the Claremont Hotel, and other elite Bay Area venues, where, since the mid-2000s, he’s been captivating adults and children alike with that old palm-reader’s touch of enchantment and charm and bamboozle.

 

With Doug, you see, it’s all about the connection—musical, artistic, human. He simply enjoys putting things together in unexpected combinations and seeing what kind of magic ensues.

Some years ago, when I was trying to create a business card for Doug, I was myself somewhat bamboozled as to how to describe what he does in such a small space. Then inspiration struck. The card read:

DOUG MCKECHNIE

CATALYTIC AGENT

 

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6. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania (I think), Early 1950s

NOT YOUR NORMAN ROCKWELL MOMENT

 

This photo, showing one end of the classic “kids’ table” at one of many festive gatherings of my mother’s side of the family, was taken by my uncle John Arnts.

The winsome subjects are part of the ongoing cast of “Cousins by the Dozens,” which seemed to be the unofficial Arnts Family motto (there would eventually be 22 of us firsts, and some close seconds).

A number of us seem to be armed, and Cousin Kim Shanahan (at left) is almost certainly planning an insurrection. Clockwise from Kim are: Jimmy Arnts, Mickey Shanahan, Tom Gillespie, my brother David, Bobby Arnts, Janet Gillespie, the back of my pigtailed head (no doubt dodging the camera) and Denny Strout, apparently about to impale Steve Jones with a fork. The usual.

Aunt Betty Shanahan at right, festive in red tassels, seems to have drawn the short straw as far as riding herd on this wacky bunch was concerned.

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7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Green Bay, Wisconsin, c. 1964-1967

GREEN BAY INTERLUDE; HILLS OF THIS STAMP

 

In the mid-1960s, as part of an unnecessary and stupid game of “corporate chess,” my dad was given a choice: be passed over for promotion and pay-raise, or move with his family to Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Too young to retire, to old to start over, with one kid (me) in college, and another (my brother David) headed that way, he felt he essentially had no choice.

As a grad student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I enrolled there at the request of my mother, who was feeling a bit overwhelmed. (Photo by Ken Thorland)

 

 

The degree of dislocation, while not accompanied by actual hardship, was disconcerting. We faced a removal from the lovely Pennsylvania farmhouse where my parents had lived for nearly a quarter-century, surrounded by woods, fields, streams, pond,  and privacy, to a ranch-style box on less than a half-acre in a suburban development.

My sister was married and living elsewhere; my dad was absorbed in his new job; and I was away at school much of the time, so it was my mother and brother who most felt the separation from long-time friends, extended family, church activities, and David’s burgeoning career as a star high-school athlete (football and track).

We all tried our best: my parents joined a new church, and made new acquaintances; David quickly established himself as an outstanding athlete at GB's Preble High; I got a summer job there; but we never really took to Green Bay. 

It was a charming city, in its way, but although we loved its small-town-like openness, we all became a bit frustrated by the non-East-Coast reluctance of most Green Bay-ites back then to converse about anything deeper than work, events, fashions, possessions, movie plots, local gossip, or the fortunes of the city’s beloved Packers.

(The most philosophical exchange I experienced there was when a young, visibly pregnant woman confided: “You know, the best thing about being pregnant” [Green Bay was heavily Catholic] “is that you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant; you are, and that’s all there is to it.”)

In my summer job, as a drama supervisor for the city’s excellent parks and recreation system, I got used to meeting families of 10-14 enthusiastic kids, many of whom I directed in the Pierrot Players summer children’s theater program, a high point for me.

Clipping about The Emperor's New Clothes

 

Bypassing the insipid plays available for children back then, I was allowed to custom-compose new mini-extravaganzas, including an adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes with parts for 58 kids, and an original fantasy adventure called Out Behind the Stars, with a cast of over 60.

Review of Out Behind the Stars.

The three drama supervisors in our team worked well together: I wrote and directed plays, spritely Miss Julie got the moms together over costumes and props, and towering ex-Marine Mr. Wayne dealt with scenery, travel, logistics and kid-wrangling.

In spite of the fact that we were lumbered with the “Showmobile,” a portable fold-out stage/trailer with all the charm and convenience of a meat locker, our shows, staged in various parks all over town, were a hit. (All those parents; how could we not be?)

The Showmobile also came in handy for other events—pet shows, fashion shows, etc., and I can still see my dainty mother in a huddle with her fellow talent-show judge, fearsome Packers linebacker Ray Nitschke, deliberating the merits of various acts.

The Packers, at least in the 1960s, were very much a hometown team, many living there with their families, active in civic events and quite visible. About six of the players attended the Presbyterian Church my parents joined, including Hall-of-Fame quarterback Bart Starr, a gentleman on and off the field.

Both the team and the musical theater I joined held their summer practices at St. Norbert’s College, and we often encountered the big guys on campus. I even dated one of the rookies, but our relationship was even shorter than his pro-football career.

The hometown fans pretty much left the team members in peace, even after they took Super Bowl I in the home-field snow and fog (attending home games was a feat of endurance; I bailed), but among themselves they were fiercely partisan, like the guy in a bar who bit my mother’s hairdresser in the thigh while carried away in celebration of their Super Bowl victory.

Green Bay lineup (R) around the time we arrived; it's pure coincidence that the Kansas City roster contained a player named Dave Hill.

 

Our Green Bay interlude lasted less than five years; my dad’s company apologetically acknowledged that moving its executives there had been a mistake, and my parents were dispatched to much-more-congenial Westport, CT, (where David became an athletic star in his third high school in as many states). My dad retired in 1975, and he and my mother happily returned to the farmhouse.

We didn’t think we’d miss Green Bay, but it seems they missed us. About the time we left, an article appeared in the Green Bay Press-Gazette, kindly praising my parents’ civic activities, my work as a drama supe, and David’s athletic and scholastic prowess.

We appreciated the thought, though it was the article’s ending, an egregious sample of well-meaning but tin-eared journalism, that could reduce us to giggles even years later:

“It is when Hills of this stamp leave us,” the writer lamented, “that we are left with gaping pits.”

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8. THROWBACK THURSDAY (THINGS FOUND IN OLD ENVELOPES III): Folklife Center of the Smokies, Newport, Tennessee, June 1975

0

TOO HOT FOR TENNESSEE

Or

 

NO PIE FOR MR. WILSON

One of the early stops on the “Dr. California’s Golden Gate Remedy” circus/vaudeville troupe’s US tour was The Folklife Center of the Smokies, located outside of the small mountain town of Newport, Tennessee. In those pre-Internet days, this location proved to be more of a cross-cultural experience than any of us had anticipated.

The photos below, which purport to be of our show, were actually shot at an informal rehearsal session, so that the local paper, the Newport Plain Talk, which only published three times a week, could set them up for the next issue.

Scandalous photos; Marque's well-toned commando fanny at C. probably didn't help matters.

 

 A number of curious locals had come around for that afternoon rehearsal, and word spread quickly. Apparently, neither our town-bred hosts nor the newspaper editors who showed the photos around had a clue: to the folks living in the surrounding mountains, a man’s torso bared to the waist was as scandalous as a woman’s, and it quickly got around that this “performance” featured half-naked men.

It’s my understanding that the Folklife Center received a deputation of indignant souls, who were only mollified by the assurance that all performers would be fully and decently clothed. Nate Stein, the young Adonis pictured juggling at left, remembers that the men in the troupe attempted to mend fences with the locals by purchasing a jug of moonshine, which, Nate recalls, “tasted like kerosene.”

 

For whatever reasons, the show was well-attended and -received, and a generous potluck dinner was provided afterwards. It was toward nightfall that I had my own Tennessee cross-cultural experience.

I was just descending from one of the rustic outdoor facilities (thoughtfully screened from the main Center building by a grove of trees), when I was hailed by one of our hostesses, a warmly enthusiastic woman named Bonnie, who was obviously high on the success of the event.

She had been chattering to a tubby little man in bib overalls, holding him in place with a grip on a loose fold of his work-shirt sleeve. Twisting his grubby fedora in his hands, his wispy pale hair and moonface damp with sweat, he was gaping somewhat helplessly at her, like a plump mouse cornered by a hungry cat.

“Amie, honey,” enthused Bonnie, “This is Mr. Wilson. He just loved your show. I can’t believe it; Mrs. Wilson wouldn’t even get out of the car. Said it was ‘evil.’ Imagine!”

Mr. Wilson turned his uncanny pale blue stare on me. He, no doubt, saw a loose-living young Jezebel. I suddenly had a brief brain-flash of the theme from the film Deliverance.

I smiled and said hello. Then Bonnie had a brainstorm: to our mutual dismay, she took my hand and wrapped it around Mr. Wilson’s arm as if we were attending a formal event. “You just take Mr. Wilson to the dessert table and get him some pie, maybe some for Mrs. Wilson. Sweeten her up.”

And off she went in another direction, leaving the two of us standing there as if we were posing for our prom photo. I could feel Mr. Wilson trembling, and decided to take action.

Evil? Mrs. Wilson thought so.

 

“Well, come on, Mr. Wilson,” I said gently, “Let’s go get some pie,” and began steering him along the path through the trees. It was nearly dark by this time, and the grove was somewhat deeply shadowed.

I was just thinking it was time to let go of that shaky, sweating arm, when, with no warning, Mr. Wilson stopped cold, took a deep breath, and plastered himself against me from chin to zipper, panting.

Not unused to defending my virtue, I broke free with a practiced elbow-and-a-shove. We stood facing each other, frozen in the moment. I could see the whites of Mr. Wilson’s eyes gleaming in what I realized was sheer terror.

“Don’t tell ‘er!” he stammered, “Please! Don’t tell ‘er!” Then he took off, blundering through the trees in the direction of the parking area. Following at a discreet distance, I saw him make a beeline for an ancient sedan (a 1947 Buick, I learned later), scramble inside, fumble-start, and roar off into the night.

Not, however, before I caught a glimpse of the fearsome profile of a woman sitting rigidly in the passenger seat with a look on her face like the triumphant Old-Testament Wrath of God.

A bit stunned, I continued to the dessert table, where Bonnie was holding forth. “Why, where’s Mr. Wilson?” she demanded, “Didn’t he want any pie?”

“He—uh—had to leave,” I said

“I’ll bet it was that wife of his!” said Bonnie, “I shouldn’t say it, but she’s such a mean old thing. She never lets Mr. Wilson have any fun!”

Evidently.

##################

9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, c. 1959; Bangor Pennsylvania, 1890-1968

GRAMMY’S RIDE

 

 

My grandmother Clara Alice Wilhelm Arnts was one intrepid lady. When she married my grandfather Verne in 1909, she knew he wanted a big family, so after some pre-WWI honeymoon travels in Europe, she settled down to motherhood, giving birth to 11 children—nine of whom were girls—in 22 years (a second boy, sadly, died at birth or shortly thereafter). 

Grammy as a bride

Her wedding outfit

 

When I was growing up, Grammy Arnts was my only accessible grandparent (both grandfathers passed on, Dad’s mother living in Arkansas), and I always looked forward eagerly to visits with her in her big house in the small slate-mining town of Bangor. It was frequently full of cousins, more each year, (eventually there would be 22 of us), and Grammy’s house was Action Central for family gatherings and reunions.

Four generations: Grammy at left, next to granddaughter Sue (Hill) Richards, holding Kip Richards (great-grandson); daughter Madeleine (Arnts) Strout, holding (great-grandson) Scott Richards; and Karen (Strout) Perkins holding (great-granddaughter) Julie Perkins.

 

Her parenting and grandparenting styles could best be described as “unflappable.” My dad used to tell us kids about going to pick my mother up for dates, and walking into the big warm kitchen to find a horde of kids roller-skating around the kitchen table and Grammy calmly preparing dinner in the middle of the melee.

 

I seldom remember her raising her voice, but we never thought of disobeying her, and her kids not only stayed out of trouble, but grew up to be good people and solid citizens.

She had her share of sorrows, outliving her husband and two of her daughters, one of whom lived with her, bed-ridden, for years. To me and my siblings and cousins, she was the ideal family matriarch, kind, serene, funny, wise, no-nonsense, and somehow, even in the midst of chaos, stylish.

Not to mention that cool ride.

##################### 

10. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan's Hill, Pennsylvania; October 23rd, 1944 and 1965

DOUBLE-DIP OF MEMORY

 

Recently, while shifting the contents of some storage bins around, I found something I thought I’d lost several moves ago—a sturdy cardboard box I’d received from my father on my 21^st birthday in 1965. 

Among other things, it contained a letter he’d written to me on the day I was born, excerpts from his journal about my first two years (including the day I fell down the cellar stairs and broke off a lower tooth, fell again and bumped my head, and then ate a cigarette butt—luckily non-filtered). 

 

He also added some early drawings, including one (executed by him at my instruction) of an invention I called a “Heli-go-caster.” He reserved all rights and had my mother and sister sign it as additional witnesses, with a postscript of my reaction to the clever and hilarious drawing (“Daddy, that’s very good”).

 

Being a father must be a tricky proposition at best. This was a lovely reminder of how often my dad got it just exactly right.

 ######################

11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Upstate New York and Elsewhere; Early 1980s; London, England, 2012

A CLASSIC (AL) FOLK TALE

As I've written here before, for several summers in the early 1970s, I traveled the East Coast folk festival circuit with my friends John Roberts and Tony Barrand, a well-loved British musical duo. Since said circuit was a relatively small and cozy one, we tended to run into the same musicians/performers frequently in the course of the festival season.

One such was a fellow named Jay Ungar, a city boy who had fallen in love with old-timey folk and fiddle music, and who displayed a lovely virtuosity on stringed instruments and a pleasing singing voice, both of which caused him to be much in demand as a solo performer and back-up musician in and out of recording studios.

Jay Ungar

 

In the early 1980s, Jay and his wife and fellow musician Molly Mason started the Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp, a lively event that took place on a college campus overlooking the Ashokan reservoir, which had been a lovely, sleepy upstate New York valley and village before being dammed in the 1970s to create a source of pure drinking water for New York City dwellers.

 

One day in 1982, as Jay tells it on his website, he was sitting alone in the evening looking out over the drowned valley and feeling especially pensive at the end of that year’s camp session, which had been especially wonderful and rewarding.  Out of nowhere, a melody started playing in his mind, so beautiful and evocative that he had to capture it on his fiddle.

Fast-forward to 1983, when Jay and his group Fiddle Fever needed one more slow tune to complete their second album Waltz of the Wind. He played his gentle melody, and the group immediately took it up and created an arrangement for string band.

 

In 1984, the tune came to the ears of director Ken Burns, who was just beginning to assemble his 1991 documentary masterpiece The Civil War. Burns has said that he felt immediately that this piece of music would play an important part in underscoring the paradoxes, contradictions and emotional cost of a war that often pitted friends and family members against one another.

 

As a result, Jay and his band—Molly Mason, Evan Stover, and Ross Barenburg, along with pianist Deborah Schwab—wound up performing almost the entire musical score of the miniseries. Jay’s tune shows up frequently, winding its haunting way though the entire 11 hours of screen time, the only modern composition in the score, blending indistinguishably with actual songs of the Civil War era. It would eventually be used in two more films and, oddly enough, in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

So, my point. Every year for the past several decades, Great Britain’s’s BBC Classic fm station has invited listeners worldwide to nominate their favorite musical compositions to its annual “Top 300” list of classical faves. My favorite group, Libera, usually nominates pieces that they perform, and I usually check the final results to see where on the list their choice has landed.

 

Scrolling idly through the Top 50 in 2012, I was amazed to see, at number 29, ahead of 271 beloved masterworks by renowned composers of classical favorites, Jay Ungar’s simple and moving waltz in D Major, or, as he refers to it, “Just a Scottish-style lament written by a Jewish boy from the Bronx”

He calls it Ashokan Farewell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kZASM8OX7s (Ashokan Farewell played by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band in 2011/5:03)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVinrBnAWt4 (Ashokan Farewell played by the Royal Marines Band/2012/3:56)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j51yztm1rnk (Ashokan Farewell played by James Galway/3:58)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ER6qINt7I (Ashokan Farewell [with lyrics], performed by Blake/3:15

http://jayandmolly.com/store/recordings/

 ###################

12. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Maryland, 1814; London, England, 1780

OH SAY CAN YOU…

The original star-spangled banner after restoration.

 

A French friend and I were having a discussion one day on the slightly ridiculous nature of certain national anthems, especially those which take the form of slightly clunky time-capsules of martial events in the formation of the countries they celebrate. Take the words of La Marseillaise, for example:

"Let's go, children of the fatherland; the day of glory has arrived! Against us tyranny's 
bloody flag is raised!/
In the countryside, do you hear/
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?/
They come right to our arms, to slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Grab your weapons, citizens! 
Form your battallions! 
Let us march! Let us march! 
May impure blood water our fields!"

Appropriate for soccer games, perhaps, but not so much for state dinners and ballet openings.

Then there’s The Star-Spangled Banner, which author Kurt Vonnegut once famously described as “consisting of eight lines of gibberish interspersed with question marks.” 

As noble as lyricist Francis Scott Keys’s motives might have been back in 1814 (and, in all fairness, he probably had no idea that he was composing his country’s future national anthem), he apparently had no problem with setting his stirring words to the tune of a then-popular ditty that was 1) a drinking song 2) a British drinking song 3) a British drinking song that is, in effect, a pagan celebratory hymn to getting drunk and having sex.

The name of this ditty, written by one John Stafford Smith and published in London in 1780, is "To Anacreon in Heaven," the theme song of a notorious bunch of rowdies calling themselves the Anacreontic Club, who met regularly to celebrate music, food, drink and nookie. And in case you’re wondering, the titular Anacreon was a Greek poet who lived around 582-485 BC and wrote poems celebrating the delights of love and wine.

The original words to the song were written by a fellow Anacreontic named Ralph Tomlinson. There are actually four verses, but the first encapsulates the sentiment nicely.

To Anacreon in heaven, where he sat in full glee

A few sons of harmony sent a petition,

That he their inspirer and patron would be,

When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:

Voice, fiddle and flute, no longer be mute,

I’ll lend you my name, and inspire you to boot!

And besides I’ll instruct you like me to entwine

The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine.

The original"Anacreon" broadsheet.

"America the Beautiful," anyone? 

(And a tip of the hat to Cousin Dale Hill, who alerted me to the situation, and who is one of the singers in the lusty live version below.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MVYl8iy2Ic
 

######################

13. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Occidental, California, 1992

A WIZARD CALLS; TERENCE MCKENNA AND THE ELFCLOWNS OF HYPERSPACE

 

Of all the very smart people I’ve met in my lifetime, one of the most colorfully (and scarily) brilliant was the late Terence McKenna.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes him: “An American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants, [Terence McKenna] spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness.“

Terence was called the ‘Timothy Leary of the '90s’ (by Timothy Leary himself); “‘one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism;” (biologist Rupert Sheldrake) and “the most important—and entertaining—visionary scholar in America” (The Whole Earth Review)”

Saying that he had an original mind was kind of like suggesting that Jerry Garcia could play guitar a little.

To most of the people in the tiny village of Occidental, however, Terence was just another low-key guy you’d encounter buying groceries at the Bohemian Market, or taking his family out for pizza at the Union Hotel, with only the occasional elfin eye-glint betraying his inner shaman.

Terence and I had only a nodding acquaintance (and I wasn’t really familiar with his work) until 1992, when Hand Goods, the Main St. store where I was working, added him to its bookshelf of local authors. Since I was then writing book reviews for the Sonoma County Independent newspaper, I decided to check out his writing.

Oh my.

I read The Archaic Revival and Food of the Gods back-to-back, and had a grand self-indulgent time writing a review of both.

“Since the publication of The Archaic Revival,” I burbled, “ I’ve no doubt that readers’ reactions have run the gamut from ecstatic epiphany to sputtering outrage to blinking bewilderment. On its pages, causalities and casuistries, Logos and Gnosis, ontologies and eschatologies and entelechies can be found somersaulting deftly in pattern with Timewaves, Jungian archetypes, Goddess worship, pan-spermia theory, the I Ching, medieval alchemy, and the loneliness of the four-substituted indole. Without a net.”

 

A few months later, a new book, Trialogues at the Edge of the West, came out. This one consisted of transcripts of ongoing conversations held at Esalen Institute,featuring Terence, noted mathematician and theorist Ralph Abraham  of Princeton University, and cutting-edge Royal Society biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake.

Though I confessed in my review of it that I’d too often found myself doing a frantic mental dog-paddle just to stay afloat in its wash of mathematical models, field theories, unconventional physics, and obscure theological mysteries, I once again had a grand time reading and reviewing.

Not long after the Trialogues review, I answered my phone to hear Terence’s distinctive amused nasal drawl; he was graciously calling to say he’d read and appreciated the reviews.

I had questions. We wound up discussing, if I recall, the nature of reality as mediated though shamanic interaction with various forms of tryptophan-hallucinogenic forms of plant life.

Or something like that.

He sang the praises of ayahuasca, a South American vine-derived substance that allowed one to hobnob with beings that he referred to as “the elfclowns of hyperspace.”

I shared my impression of a dry and fussy little scholar ensconced in some corner of his brain in the midst of the incandescent carnival wonders of an ayahuasca trip, taking the copious and meticulous notes that allowed him to report these experiences with such devastating and articulate lucidity.

“You get that!” he crowed.

As we concluded our conversation, he added: “Oh, and I really liked the monkeys.”

Monkeys?

I found the reference in the Trialogues review.

“For those who, never expected a logical connection between physics and fantasy, the adventurous threesome’s utterly serious investigation into whether persistent entities like angels, ghosts, fairies, afreets, gnomes, incubi, etc., arise physically from Gaian consciousness projected on the human psyche, or as a coalescing downwards of the Oversoul into more complex physical forms capable of interacting with humanity is more fun than a barrel of angelic Darwinian monkeys tap-dancing on the head of a pin.”

I had to admit, this was one whole new level of bull session.

Not long afterwards, remembering our conversation, I put together a collage (below) that I called “Ayahuasca Dreamin.”

Terence died in 2003. In his New York Times obituary, his doctors were quoted as saying that his ingestion of psychedelic substances had not contributed to his early demise.

He would have been tickled to know about the mystery currently (2018) surrounding a motion picture, which is (or isn’t) being made, based on his own mind-bending film True Hallucinations (available on YouTube), and starring (or not) Jim Carrey.

 

Rumor persists that it’s being made, and that Carrey hied himself off to the wilderness and ingested five grams of psilocybin mushrooms to prepare for the role. There is a poster (on closer inspection, photoshopped), and a trailer, and lots of speculation. One would think that Terence himself was orchestrating the whole thing.

Oh, on second thought, maybe he is.

*****************************

Here’s a little slice of Terence, in which he mentions his first psychedelic experience, which was with a concentration of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, a chemical substance that occurs in many plants and animals, has a rapid onset, and intense effects. (Because of its relatively short duration of action, DMT is sometimes known as the "businessman's trip.")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11U8-mDleZM (Terence Mckenna/The World is Magic/3:41)

################### 

14. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; 1954

HAZEL WAS A BITCH

Or

HURRICANE ARCHAEOLOGY

In eastern Pennsylvania, where I grew up, we didn’t have to deal with earthquakes or tornadoes, but, for a while there, we were sitting ducks for hurricanes.

In October of 1954, shortly before I turned ten, Hurricane Hazel (They were all girls back then) came smashing through, wreaking huge destruction from Haiti to Toronto.

 

 

As I’ve written here before, when my parents bought my childhood home around 1940, it was a once-prosperous but then rundown and semi-abandoned farm, with a scatter of the kind of agricultural structures one might expect.

These included two large two-plus-story barns, built well over a century before, one hulking on the other side of the lane in front of the farmhouse, the other sunk into a hillside in the back.

The Front Barn, with my sister Susan and Cousin Doreen on the house porch.

This happy photo shows the Front Barn's level of delapidation. 

Though the back barn was in slightly better shape, both of them, rather than enhancing the property, were huge liabilities, accidents waiting to happen—unstable, unusable, and stuffed with multiple accretions of junk from previous owners.

My mother and Susan near the Back Barn

 

Our family certainly didn’t have the money to have them taken down, so there they stood like black holes in my childhood. By the time I was able to go outside on my own, my big sister Susan and I were absolutely forbidden to play in or around either barn.

With Susan and neighbor Myer Meyerson, with the Front Barn hulking in the background.

 

Enter Hazel.

Although it lost a few slates, our farmhouse, with its 18-inch-thick stone walls, could ride out just about any storm. Sue mostly remembers how loud it was as we huddled with my four-year-old brother David in the dim light of the front living room (the power had long since gone), trying to distract ourselves with a board game, while outside all manner of debris, tree branches, entire trees, for heaven’s sake, went hurtling past.

Dad clearing vines from the outer wall of the stone house.

 

I remember being more excited than scared by all the commotion. As we finished a game, I got up to peer out of the window, just in time to see the big black front barn appear to lift itself into the air, as if taking flight, then suddenly collapse down, as if a gigantic foot had stomped on it.

“The barn fell down!’ I yelled, “The barn fell down!”

“How did you see that?” yelled my mother, from an upstairs back bedroom.

 

It seemed that the same monster gust had taken out both barns simultaneously. Both had pancaked almost neatly in place, doing surprisingly little damage to surrounding trees and structures, and leaving our house intact. (Even the gigantic willow below the house had obligingly fallen in the opposite direction)

The enormous willow can be seen in this photo of me with Dad and Sue. After it fell, its cut-up trunk sections were the size of Volkswagens.

 

Somewhere between a catastrophe and a blessing, that gust of wind certainly resolved my dad’s dilemma in regards to disassembling those two deathtraps, and ushered in a delightful era of archaeological exploration, with a specialty in 18th- and 19th-century artifacts.

After Dad had checked various areas for safety, we kids, over the next few years, were allowed to rummage through the ever-narrowing outskirts of the wreckage in search of treasures.

In the front barn were horse harnesses, horse-collars, currycombs, hoof picks, horseshoes the size of soup plates, ancient farm implements and vehicles (the latter mostly smashed), blacksmithing tools, old furniture, and, for some reason, a bent and cracked stained-glass billiard-table lamp.

The back barn was more unpredictable: among its contents lay scabrous oil paintings of dubious fruit, stone jugs and pickling jars, numerous bottles, chicken cages, an ancient churn, and an old-fashioned icebox (luckily too small to get inside of), all silted with a thick layer of chicken poop.

Saddling Tomahawk and Fancy Prance in the stable/corral area built in the ruins of the Front Barn.

 

For the next few years, whenever one of us kids got bored, we’d go search in the debris to see what we could come up with for dinner-table conversation. It became a kind of family game to try to figure out what various items (home-manufactured a century before) were actually used for.

One jumble of pipes and vessels in the back barn turned out to have been a Prohibition-era still. My dad figured this out when one of his chickens fell through a hole into a walled-off section that had been a mash pit, still fermenting away. (The chicken emerged unharmed but quite intoxicated.)

Over the next few years, the wreckage got hauled off, sold for scrap, sorted out into neat piles, added to our growing collection of oddities. Dad mined the two barns for recyclable items—boards, beams, huge hand-forged hinges and fittings, odd hardware, wrought-iron grillwork, usable tools. David and I developed muscles from wheelbarrowing loads of debris.

David and Dad installing a floor made out of boxcar wood while converting the Back Barn Foundation into a stable.

 

Within a few years, only the stone foundations remained; the front barn area first housed a garage and workshop, to which were added stables and a corral that finally (roofed over) became storage and RV parking. The back barn became a two-horse stable with second-story hay storage, then was turned into a sweet little rental cottage.

With David and horses next to the finished stable.

The rental cottage; the silo contained a spiral staircase.

 

The “archaeological” period lasted only a few years, but it had a life-changing impact on at least one of us. When my brother David graduated from Brown University with a degree in bio-geology, he promptly headed to Vermont and started a business called “The Barn People,” taking down derelict post-and-beam structures and restoring and re-purposing their timbers for other buildings.

David's house and barn in Vermont, rebuilt from the ground up after a fire.

 

This morphed into his designing gorgeous custom homes, with green building techniques and lavish use of recycled and local materials and local craftwork. 

 

Above and below: some of David's work

 

David’s life direction was a bit of a surprise to our family, but, on reflection, he did begin his apprenticeship at the age of four.

##########################

15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Graton, California; 2003-2018

LIFE WITH A LABYRINTH
Or,

IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
Or,

NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST

 

In 2001, I moved from the small town of Occidental to the even tinier wine-country town of Graton, California. There I shared a house and garden with the delightful and ever-unpredictable Judith Fenley, who ran a thriving holistic-health practice in another building on the property. I would live in Judith’s house from 2001-2007, and in her rental unit from 2010 to 2014.

House from labyrinth entrance.

 

Judith has always been fascinated by many subjects, and in June of 2003, it was labyrinths. In celebration of her 59th birthday, she decided to construct a seven-lobed Cretan-style labyrinth on what had been a fairly small and undistinguished patch of grass below the house. 

Before I knew it, Judith was busy digging up the lawn and using old garden hoses to lay out the swirling pattern; once that was established, the labyrinth project began to take on a life of its own.

Judith leading an early labyrinth workshop.

 

Stones appeared, brought by us, by friends, neighbors and family members, in pockets, armloads, boxes, bags, wheelbarrows, and pickup trucks. I never came back from a walk on the nearby trail without a likely rock in each hand. Slowly the sections of lines were joined.

 

Center of labyrinth with spontaneous offering.

 

Judith had decided to construct the labyrinth rainbow-wise, with reddish stones on the outer limits, blending into orange, yellow, etc., all the way to white/metallic/crystal in the center.

 

Almost spontaneously, we also began to add objects to the dividing rows—shells, crystals, gemstones, coral, fossils, and small artifacts made out of glass, brass, wood, resin, even plastic.

 

People donated items like a sonorous Japanese temple bell, iron-and-rock sculptures, and figures of St. Francis, Cupid, the Virgin Mary, Kokopelli, and other benevolent guardians.

Entrance bell with Cupid

 

Over the years, with the addition of paving and plantings, the labyrinth became a room-like focus for workshops and gatherings. On quieter days, it was an area where time seemed to slow and stretch, and a sure-fire stress-buster for us and for others. 

We’d hear the soft sound of the Japanese bell, or happen to look outside and see one of Judith’s clients, or a friend, or a neighbor, or a perfect stranger, in the midst of slow-walking the winding path to the center of the labyrinth, or unwinding calmly outward.

 

People continued to donate special stones or objects, sometimes in memory of a departed friend or family member, sometimes for reasons we never knew.

Tuning the labyrinth, with protection from dust and mold.

 

It somehow became my job to ”tune” the labyrinth after each long rainy winter. Using a paintbrush and a trowel to remove the past season’s accumulation of leaves and pine needles and the new growth of weeds, I’d work my way from the entrance to the center, re-aligning each stone and re-positioning objects displaced by occasional faltering feet or curious children.

A finely tuned labyrinth.

 

This could take as much as a week, but to me, an untuned labyrinth was like a rusty bell—it just didn’t ring as true.

Both Judith and I have since moved on, but we both carry, within the complex convolutions of our brain matter, a distinctly rainbow-labyrinth-shaped configuration. And we always know the way to the center.

 

With Judith and St. Francis on FoolsDay, 2011.

###############################

16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Booneville, Arkansas; 1908-1923

NOT A BIG SARDINE; NAMING THE BOYS

When it came to naming her three sons, my Grandmother Hill apparently couldn’t win for losing.

She was an educated woman and a schoolteacher by trade, so when her eldest was born in 1908, she named him “Horace,” after the famed ancient Roman lyric poet.

Grandmother Hill with Baby Horace

 

This was fine until he started to mix with the other boys in his neighborhood, who thought “Horace” a bit namby-pamby for a Booneville kid.

The kid in question was both large for his age and good-natured, so he defused tentative taunts with a shrug and the statement: “Well, if you don’t like it, you can call me “Butch.” And Butch he became, except to his family, the nickname following him into the Navy and his subsequent career as a long-distance trucker.

In 1923, Grandmother Hill wanted to name her youngest son after her twin brother, Claud, but my granddad didn’t care for the name, so they compromised on “Claud Justin,” with “Justin” for everyday use.

The youngest by ten years, Justin was an adorable child, and his mother’s pet. He was so frequently addressed by her as “Justin dear” that he came to believe that that was his name, which he interpreted as “Dear Dus.” My dad said he often used it in the third person, as in: “You’d better stop that or Dear Dus will tell Mama!”

He became known to his family as “Dus,” with “Justin” reserved for the general public, as when he was elected President of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association in the 1950s.

Howard Dean with Baby Dus.

 

And then there was my dad.

Born in 1913, he was given the unexceptional first name of “Howard,” and the middle name of “Dean,” after a beloved aunt.

You read that right; Howard’s aunts, both by blood and marriage, formed a colorful cascade of nomenclature—Lily, Ruby, Lava, Vera, Ora, Maude, Mayme, Phronie (Sophronia), Tonkie (Florence) and, yes, Dean.

This was also, remember, the South, where middle names (Billy Ray, Jim Bob, Betty May) were frequently hung out to dry in full view of the public. When young Howard Dean got old enough to leave the house on his own, his little playmates just couldn’t resist chanting the rhyme: “Howard Dean’s a big sardine!” (In small-town Arkansas, "Howard" was pronounced more like "Hard.")

Well, my dad may have been an oversensitive child, but he was no wimp, and waded in with both fists flying. However, it was apparently so much fun thus to rile him that the “sardine” taunt persisted far beyond the usual lifespan of lame jokes.

After dealing with one too many black eyes and/or bloody noses, my long-suffering grandmother hauled her troublesome middle child down to the county courthouse and had his name changed to the relatively un-rhyme-able “Howard Carl” (The first syllable of his dad’s name), with which he had no quarrel.

The boys: Justin, Horace and Howard.

 

In his memoirs, my dad remarked that the old name had actually proved useful. “With no previous training,” he wrote, “I became heavyweight boxing champion of my college.”

I once asked my dad if he liked being named Howard.

“Well,” he replied, shrugging resignedly, “At least it wasn’t Horace.”

####################

17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: 885 Clayton Street, San Francisco, California, and many other places; 1970-Present

DEMON IN DISGUISE; THE REMARKABLE LIFE AND TIMES OF DAVID BROMBERG

(Photo by Bill Spence)

 

The first time I encountered guitar wizard David Bromberg, he had a pick in his hand. No, not a guitar pick, but the lethal long-handled kind with pointy ends for digging.

I was coming home from work and encountered a small gathering on the pavement outside of 885 Clayton St., the headquarters of the San Francisco Folk Music Club. Fellow residents of the house watched in fascination as David attacked a solid sidewalk square with aforesaid tool. With each blow, as concrete flew in all directions, he grunted something that sounded like “Take that, Aronowitz!” 

David had showed up at 885 earlier, in the company of Rosalie Sorrels, with whom he had been touring and recording. He had also arrived with a considerable mad on at one Al Aronowitz (a renegade music journalist and sometime talent manager best known for having introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles), who had somehow Done Him Wrong.

Faith Petric, head of the SFFMC and owner of 885, had convinced David to put all of that wrath to good use in opening up a space in the sidewalk for what inevitably became known as the “David Bromberg Memorial Magnolia.”

David goofing with Jay Ungar and friends in the living room at 885 Clayton St. (Photo by Roger Steffens)

 

For those not familiar with the amazing career of David Bromberg, he’s arguably the most celebrated living American musician who’s not actually a household name. 

Though primarily known as a guitar player, he’s a multi-instrumentalist who learned guitar technique from the Reverend Gary Davis (in person); jammed with B.B. King and Mississippi John Hurt; and picked up ot licks on mandolin, banjo, dobro, and pedal steel from masters of those instruments. He’s also an accompanist, sideman, singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, folklorist and the world’s foremost authority on American-made violins.

 

David in the mid-1970s

 

He’s appeared on over 150 records, a musical chameleon accompanying everyone from Ravi Shankar to Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Muddy Waters, Jerry Garcia, George Harrison (with whom he co-wrote a song), John Hartford, Ringo Starr, Al Kooper, Sha Na Na, the Eagles, Phoebe Snow, Bob Dylan, and a breathtaking roster of other A-list performers.

Oh, and he’s also made 18 of his own solo albums. Pretty amazing for a guy whose voice is a vocal coach’s nightmare—equal parts creak, growl, croon, caress, howl, and moan—but he can sing the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks out of just about any folk, jazz, pop, bluegrass or blues song ever written, especially his own. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLl9O8D9Gq8  (David Bromberg/Demon in Disguise/2015/3:43)

 

Back when I first met him, at the very beginning of his solo career, David had already proved he could handle large crowds with aplomb. After all, his very first on-his-own appearance ever was an unplanned set in front of a barely-under-control crowd of 600,000 at the legendary 1970 Isle of Wight Festival (they booed Kris Kristofferson and other fine musicians off the stage—David got three encores).

In those days, however, he seemed to prefer more intimate settings, like San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, or the fabled Boarding House. A generous and inclusive musician, David has always been a magnet for other fine players anywhere in his vicinity. 

One evening at the Boarding House, so many of them crowded the stage for his last set that he announced: “I’m re-naming the band; this is now David Bromberg and Die Ganze Mischpocha” (a cozy Yiddish term meaning the entirety of one’s entire extended family by dint of blood, marriage, friendship, and, evidently, music).

David accompanies Rosalie Sorrels at the Fox Hollow Festival, 1970. (Photo by Bill Spence)

 

David was definitely mischpocha at 885 Clayton, where he was likely to turn up when playing or recording in SF. He and I enjoyed each other’s senses of humor (At his bequest, for instance, I embroidered the only X-rated western shirt in my entire stitchery career.)

As I’ve written before, we began encountering each other on the east coast, where he was rapidly becoming the darling of the summer folk-festival scene. I still recall vividly the occasion when, at dawn on a Saturday morning at the Fox Hollow Festival, David and English singer John Roberts came crashing and giggling like two bears on nitrous oxide into the tent where I was sleeping. “David drove all night to get here after his gig in the City, and doesn’t have anyplace to stay,” explained John.

They wouldn’t stop being silly, so I left them to it; there was no point in trying to sleep at music-day-and-night Fox Hollow anyway.

In the years between 1970, when his first self-titled album came out, and 1980, David toured, recorded (ten albums in as many years), and played on other musicians’ records incessantly. He recalls a two-year period when he was home for less than two weeks. Some kind of crash-and-burn was inevitable; when it came, nobody expected the form it took.

He stopped touring. 

He stopped performing.

Entirely.

For 22 years.

He and singer Nancy Josephson (Buffalo Gals, Angel Band), whom he’d married in 1979, moved from Marin County to Chicago, where David began to study violin making at the Frank Warren School (now the Chicago School of Violin Making).

David and Nancy

 

He became fascinated by the art of identifying the maker of a violin by its construction, became an instrument broker, and began to amass a collection of several hundred American-made violins, a subject on which he’s since become a recognized authority.

(His collection is headed for the music division of the Library of Congress, where David is frequently a consultant and speaker; when asked—as he often is— the difference between a fiddle and a violin, he’ll reply, poker-faced, “About $10,000.”)

By the early 2000s, David and Nancy were fed up with Chicago winters, and decided to move back east. After they were outbid for a house in Wilmington, Delaware, they were approached by its mayor, James M. Baker, with a proposition: move to Wilmington and be part of a cultural revitalization of the city.

With municipal help, they opened David Bromberg & Associates Fine Violins, a sales-and-repair shop; became involved in the restoration of an historic theater; and David was named an Official Goodwill Ambassador for the City of Wilmington. 

In this friendly setting, he slowly but surely began to get his groove back. He jammed with local musicians and started to perform at nearby venues. In 2007, he released his first new studio album since 1989, and even began to tour a bit, this time more gently and sensibly, but without having lost one whit of his edge. His current range of activities can be seen at: http://davidbromberg.net/

 

 

In retrospect, David’s sudden 1980 escape into what interviewer Mark Maron called “full-nerd-rabbit-hole-violin-mode” came as a surprise to many people. Me, maybe not so much.

I remember, from the early 70s, his first fascinated attempts at fiddle-playing. It was somewhat astonishing to witness someone so proficient on so many other instruments producing such awkward squeaks and squawks.

 

The main problem was that Mr. Bromberg, a burly 6’3” tall, has enormous hands, with fingerpads that look to be about the size of buffalo nickels. Watching him try to cram them onto the delicate neck of a violin was almost excruciating and slightly hilarious.

Then there was the time that I got to tag along with David on a fiddle-trading foray into the sweltering reaches of Manhattan. He started out, I believe, with one mediocre violin, and I could not but marvel as he haggled, charmed, cajoled, tale-swapped, name-dropped, and BSed his way from one hole-in-the-wall music-store or pawnshop to the next, always trading upwards.

By the end of the day, if I remember correctly, he owned a nice double-fiddle case, two much better instruments, some random bows, and a big satisfied smile.

So did he ever learn to actually play the fiddle? You can see for yourself in this trailer for a full-length 2011 documentary on his life and career, directed by Beth Toni Kruvant.

The title kind of says it all: David Bromberg: Unsung Treasure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi1B-m6u4mI

The cover of David's first self-titled solo album (drawing by his sister Serena).

 

 

@@@@@

18. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Booneville, Arkansas, c. 1920

THE SUBJECT WAS DEATH (ANOTHER HOWARD TALE)

Baby Howard (R) in the bean patch with big brother Horace.

My Grandmother Hill used to say that my dad, Howard, was “harder to raise than my other two boys put together.”

He was apparently a sensitive, high-strung, and over-imaginative child; take that time, for instance, that he heard a tale about someone who had gone into a deep coma and had been inadvertently buried alive.

Immediately Howard became terrified that this would happen to him. (He always maintained, when telling the story, that it wasn’t death itself he feared, but accidental premature burial.)

In vain his family listed all the things they could do to prevent this from happening: hold a mirror under his nose to see if it would fog up; take his body temperature; stick him with pins to get a response—nothing convinced him, and he grew more and more upset by the moment.

Fortunately, Howard’s big cousin Leland, whom he idolized, happened to stop by, arriving in the midst of the ruckus. When he discovered what was going on, he said just the right thing: 

“Howard, calm down. If you die, we’ll just keep you around until you start to smell bad.”

Worked like a charm.

PS: If anyone is thinking about invoking the “dead ringer” and “saved by the bell” tropes often mistakenly associated with this situation, please go to https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dead-ringer.html first.

#################### 

19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Interlocken Center for Experiential Education, Windsor, New Hampshire; 1980s-90s

INTERLOCKEN SUGAR BLUES/CANDY WARS

Around the time I started working at Interlocken, a decision was made to ban candy and other edibles from “care packages” sent to International Summer Camp students by their families.

The reasons for this were clearly and carefully outlined in the pre-arrival literature sent out to incoming students that year (it also included a list of suggested non-edible care-package-items—stuffed toys, games, puzzles, stickers, books, comics, magazines, yo-yos, etc).

The no-candy issues went above and beyond those of dental health, and included concerns (based on previous experience) about fostering a have/have-not candy “economy,” with candy used as bribes for popularity, or to get other kids to do chores; of hoarding of food in living units, which attracted local wildlife (including raccoons and porcupines); of spoiled appetites, overeating, and pervasive littering with candy wrappers.

And, I might add, it’s not as if the little darlings were being cruelly deprived of sweets. Each child was allowed, on twice-weekly visits to the Camp Store (where every student, regardless of socio-economic background started the session with the same amount of “credit” for purchases), to buy two candy bars or their sucrose-laden equivalent.

The Interlocken Dining Hall, designed by Peter Jackson Herman.

 

Moreover, desserts were regularly served with meals in the Dining Hall; cakes appeared on birthdays; snacks often featured cookies and granola bars; and breakfast offerings included sugar and honey to put on cereal, maple syrup for pancakes and French toast, as well as sweetened granola, cocoa, sweet rolls, dates, and raisins.

While many of the kids grudgingly went along with the change, others seemed to feel that it was their Divine Right to consume as much candy as they wanted, whenever they wanted it. 

This juvenile discontent was somewhat predictable, especially in those first years of the ban. What threw us, however, were the extremes to which some parents would go to smuggle candy to their offspring. 

It actually became necessary each day, as packages were distributed in the camp office during free time before dinner, that they be opened there and then by the recipients, their contents investigated (by staff and leaders-in-training assigned to the duty), and any edibles confiscated.

Here I am holding the "litter-ometer" one attempted solution to control the trash problem. The idea was that anyone offended by litter lying on the ground could pick it up and deposit it in the box. When it filled, no candy was sold in the camp store for the next three days. It worked (kind of) as an incentive for kids to pick up trash before it landed in the box.

 

It was fairly amazing to see the contortions some kids would go through while attempting to hide the fact that a just-opened package contained candy, and it became somewhere between a game and a challenge for package inspectors to sniff out hidden contraband.

Candy was found inside rolled-up socks and folded T-shirts, and in hollowed-out books. Gum (also forbidden, as it tended to wind up stuck under dining-hall tables and seats) would be carefully taped between the pages of magazines. A flashlight might be filled with jellybeans instead of batteries, or a teddy bear’s back seam opened and re-sewn after its stuffing had been replaced with sweets.

The most outrageous ploy I witnessed was when a package inspector, rummaging gently through the contents of one parcel, happened to pick up an oddly heavy box of tampons—which had been packed with candy, and then actually shrink-wrapped in an attempt to make it seem innocent.

We often tried—and failed—to imagine the mind-set of parents thus demonstrating to their children that it was fine to: 1) overdose on sugar, and 2) sneak around to sabotage a quite reasonable request by those who were in charge of their kids for the summer (though admittedly, some of the contraband could have been inserted by siblings).

At the end of each of the two summer sessions, however, came a kind of comeuppance: those kids who had received candy during the summer and were positive it had been consumed by staff in late-night sugar orgies, received, on boarding one of the buses carrying them to a central point to meet their parents, a tidy package labeled by name and containing their confiscated sweets.

Which, of course, they tore into, leaving their welcoming parents at the other end of the ride to deal with not only the tide of end-of-camp emotions and stay-up-all-night fatigue, but a massive sugar high.

Just a tiny touch of sweet revenge.

######################

 

20. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Joy Ridge, Occidental, California; 1987-2000

WILD KINGDOM: ROOSTING ON THE RIDGE

In 1987, when I decided to give up my bi-coastal lifestyle and stay in California, I needed to find a full-time place to live. After a jump or two, I ended up in “Ridge Roost,” a converted chicken shed located on forested Joy Ridge, above the village of Occidental.

My semi-permeable cabin in the 1970s.

..

...and in the 2000s.

 

This henhouse had been repurposed as a guest cabin for an architectural Master’s-Degree project by the son of property owners Nolan and Judith Kiner, whose large house perched at the top of the parcel.

By the time I moved in, the Kiners had converted their one-acre hillside setting into a lovely Japanese-style “stroll garden,” complete with small fern-fringed ponds; picturesque rocky streambeds (dry in summer, flowing in winter); rustic little bridges; and a cobblestoned central area laid out to form the Japanese character for “heart.” I would live in this sylvan spot for over 12 years, exchanging gardening work for part of the rent.

Garden Vignettes

 

One thing I soon discovered was that the heavily forested ridge was filled with all manner of wild creatures, and that my cabin, while picturesque, was a tad jerry-built, thus it and the fenced garden were somewhat semi-permeable to denizens of the wild.

On the back deck

Sometimes this was unnerving, as when raccoons rumpused like Sendak’s Wild Things beneath the house, fighting and growling, or when a bobcat strolled casually past as I was taking out the compost.

Common alligator lizard

 

Sometimes it was frustrating, as when hungry deer shouldered open a carelessly closed gate or squeezed under the eight-foot fence surrounding the property and chowed down on our lovingly nurtured plants.

Sometimes it was creepy—scorpions in the woodbox, banana slugs under the toilet seat, centipedes in the kitchen, alligator lizards in the closet.

And sometimes it was downright enchanting, especially in summer—squirrels dancing on the roof, butterflies or dragonflies floating or zipping through, in one open door and out the other; a brown towhee hopping each morning through the open kitchen window to pick up crumbs from the counter and eat from a dish of millet I put out for it.

California Towhee

 

I sometimes felt as if I ought to be bursting into occasional song like a Disney cartoon princess.

Even the trees got into the act; my front door opened into a second-generation redwood circle surrounding a burnt-out snag. On stormy nights, I would lie in my tower-loft bedroom and feel the shift and groan of their roots moving beneath the cabin, quite spooky (especially during winter storms) until you got used to it.

View from front porch with Nutmeg the cat.

 

The towhee visited every summer morning for two years. Once, a blue Steller’s jay the size of a small chicken decided to emulate this behavior, but having gotten through the window, it panicked and flailed about destructively until I flung a towel over it and summarily ejected it (“And stay out!).

Stellar's Jay

 

One banana slug exhibited particularly eccentric behavior (if such a lively word can be applied to such an inert-looking organism). Having somehow developed a taste for the fine white paper used in books, It attacked a stack of reading material that I kept on the top of my toilet tank in the cabin’s somewhat rickety afterthought of a bathroom. (I never did find exactly how it was getting in.)

On discovering it feasting on my copy of Everyday Zen, I took the creature outside. The next day it was back. I took it further away; after a few days, it returned. I deposited it in a deep ravine behind the house; it returned a week later.

 

Banana slug eating a banana peel.

 

Finally, I gave up, stopped keeping books on the toilet tank, and provided it with a wad of toilet paper, which it seemed to enjoy just as well. After a month or so, it disappeared, possibly a victim of lack of nutrition or an unwholesome addiction to dioxin.

The Kiners sold the property after I’d been there for a couple of years, and I kind of came with it as one of the perks. The new owners, Gene and Will, came up from the city on weekends before retiring to Sonoma County; they loved the garden, added attractive features, and the work-for-rent exchange happily continued.

Interior main room (formerly the chicken coop), with visitors' belongings scattered about. The roof-pitch went quickly from four feet to ten feet.

 

We were even featured in an exclusive West County garden tour. “Oh,” people would say as I showed them around, “You’re so lucky! You get to live in that adorable cabin in this lovely spot and and take care of this beautiful garden!” 

 

“Yes.” I’d agree, with every muscle aching from the Herculean effort to get the place looking perfect (not to mention a slug eating toilet paper in my bathroom), “I’m very lucky.”

Me (center) among the azaleas.

 

 

My tower-loft bedroom with 360˚ views.

In 2000, starting to feel a little long in the tooth to be shoving around wheelbarrows full of rocks (for walls and path edging) and firewood (for my old-fashioned pig of a woodstove), and tired of working on damp days with chilly water dripping down my neck, I moved to another guesthouse up the road, this one recently and tightly built, with plenty of open space and sunshine.

It was lovely—warm and cozy and convenient, but, you know, at first it felt a little…lonely.

###################

The End for Now; More to Come... 

ALL MY BLOGS TO DATE

ALL OF MY BLOGS TO DATE 

 

HOW TO WRITE YOUR MEMOIRS (Even if You’re Not a Writer and Your Memory Isn’t What It Used to Be)

https://memo-howbooklet-amiehill.blogspot.com

MEMOIRS (This is not as daunting as it looks. Each section contains 20 short essays, ranging in length from a few paragraphs to a few pages. Great bathroom reading. 

They’re not in sequential order, so one can start anywhere.)

 NOTE: If you prefer to read these on paper, you can highlight/copy/paste into a Word doc and print them out, (preferably two-sided or on the unused side of standard-sized paper).

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part One

https://amiehillthrowbackthursdays.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Two

https://ahilltbt2.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Three

https://amiehilltbt3.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Four

https://tbt4amie-hill.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Five

https://ami-ehiltbt-5.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Six

https://am-iehilltbt6.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Seven

 https://a-miehilltbt7.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Eight

https://a-miehilltbt8.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Nine

https://amiehilltbt9.blogspot.com/ 

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Ten

https://amiehill10tbt.blogspot.com

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Eleven

https://11tbtamiehill.blogspot.com/2021/02/w-elcome-to-my-past.html

*********************************

ILLUSTRATED ADVENTURES IN VERSE 

FLYING TIME; OR, THE WINGS OF KAYLIN SUE (2020)

https://amiehillflyingtime.blogspot.com/

(38 lines, 17 illustrations)

 

TRE & THE ELECTRO-OMNIVOROUS GOO (2018)

http://the-electroomnivorousgoo.blogspot.com/2018/05/an-adventure-in-verse.html

 (160 lines, 26 illustrations) 

DRACO& CAMERON (2017)

 http://dracoandcameron.blogspot.com/ (36 lines, 18 illustrations) 

CHRISTINA SUSANNA (1984/2017)

https://christinasusanna.blogspot.com/ (168 lines, 18 illustrations) 

OBSCURELY ALPHABETICAL & D IS FOR DYLAN (2017) (1985)

https://obscurelyalphabetical.blogspot.com/ (41 lines, 8 illustrations)

 

**************************************

ARTWORK 

AMIE HILL: CALLIGRAPHY & DRAWINGS

https://amiehillcalligraphy.blogspot.com/ 

AMIE HILL: COLLAGES 1

https://amiehillcollages1.blogspot.com/ 

***********************************

LIBERA HISTORICAL TIMELINE (2007-PRESENT)

For Part One (introduction to Libera and to the Timeline, extensive overview & 1981-2007), please go to: http://liberatimeline.blogspot.com/